He bragged in college about his literary talent and ambitions, and wrote swaggering letters to Whit Burnett, the editor of Story magazine. Salinger yearned ardently for just this kind of attention.

Updike said he admired вЂњthat open-ended Zen quality they have, the way they donвЂ™t snap shut.вЂќДЄs a young man Mr. Salinger, who used italics almost as a form of musical notation, was a master not of literary speech but of speech as people actually spoke it) and the way they demolished whatever was left of the traditional architecture of the short story В— the old structure of beginning, middle, end В— for an architecture of emotion, in which a story could turn on a tiny alteration of mood or irony. The stories were remarkable for their sharp social observation, their pitch-perfect dialogue (Mr. Many critics were more admiring of вЂњNine Stories,вЂќ which came out in 1953 and helped shape writers like Mr. Salinger indicates that he, more than anyone else, has not turned his back on the times but, instead, has managed to put his finger on whatever struggle of significance is going on today between self and culture.вЂќ Mark David Chapman, who killed John Lennon in 1980, even said the explanation for his act could be found in the pages of вЂњThe Catcher in the Rye.вЂќ In 1974 Philip Roth wrote, вЂњThe response of college students to the work of J. The novelвЂ™s allure persists to this day, even if some of HoldenвЂ™s preoccupations now seem a bit dated, and it continues to sell more than 250,000 copies a year in paperback.

Reading вЂњCatcherвЂќ used to be an essential rite of passage, almost as important as getting your learnerвЂ™s permit. With its cynical, slangy vernacular voice (HoldenвЂ™s two favorite expressions are вЂњphonyвЂќ and вЂњgoddamвЂќ), its sympathetic understanding of adolescence and its fierce if alienated sense of morality and distrust of the adult world, the novel struck a nerve in cold war America and quickly attained cult status, especially among the young. Though not everyone, teachers and librarians especially, was sure what to make of it, вЂњCatcherвЂќ became an almost immediate best seller, and its narrator and main character, Holden Caulfield, a teenager newly expelled from prep school, became AmericaвЂ™s best-known literary truant since Huckleberry Finn. SalingerвЂ™s literary reputation rests on a slender but enormously influential body of published work: the novel вЂњThe Catcher in the Rye,вЂќ the collection вЂњNine StoriesвЂќ and two compilations, each with two long stories about the fictional Glass family: вЂњFranny and ZooeyвЂќ and вЂњRaise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction.вЂќ He was not in any pain before or at the time of his death.вЂќ вЂњDespite having broken his hip in May,вЂќ the agency said, вЂњhis health had been excellent until a rather sudden decline after the new year.

SalingerвЂ™s literary representative, Harold Ober Associates, announced the death, saying it was of natural causes. Salinger, who was thought at one time to be the most important American writer to emerge since World War II but who then turned his back on success and adulation, becoming the Garbo of letters, famous for not wanting to be famous, died on Wednesday at his home in Cornish, N.H., where he had lived in seclusion for more than 50 years.

Death of the author